


I Would Wait a Lifetime to Give In to You

by bubblewrapstargirl



Series: One Shots [24]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Generation Kill, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Implied Relationships, M/M, POV Outsider, but they are not a thing, rated for language, some background Brad/Nate because you can't write Gen Kill fic without it okay, this is all about the Brad/Ray otp feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3925381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblewrapstargirl/pseuds/bubblewrapstargirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Brad picks up, Ray doesn't bother with his usual sweet talk. He just launches in to the main point of the conversation, which is, naturally; </p><p>"Captain America is alive, Brad. He's alive and he's fighting aliens in New York."</p><p>"God<i>damn</i> it, Ray," says Brad. "Stop calling me when you're high."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Would Wait a Lifetime to Give In to You

**Author's Note:**

> GK fans: this is focused on our boys, and all you need to know about Steve and Bucky is that they fought in WWII, were genetically enhanced into super-soldiers, separated, frozen in cryo-stasis, and woke up to keep on fighting bad guys in the modern era.
> 
> Marvel fans: you don't need to have seen GK, this can easily be read as an OC love story, framed around this outsider's POV on Steve and Buck based on what the media says about them. 
> 
> I should warn however, that Ray Person has a very potty mouth and says very impolite things, and if I did not write him this way I would not be writing _him_ at all. No offence is meant, he just talks a lot of shit to see who will put up with him, okay?

Ray has a very active imagination, so he can easily picture the concerned frown that Brad will be wearing right now, seeing 'Your Best Buddy Ray-Ray' on his caller ID. They just spoke last night, and, contrary to popular belief, Ray is not clingy.

When Brad picks up, Ray doesn't bother with his usual sweet talk. He just launches in to the main point of the conversation, which is, naturally;

"Captain America is alive, Brad. He's alive and he's fighting aliens in New York."

"God _damn_ it, Ray," says Brad, "If you stop taking whatever contraband a Whiskey Tango miscreant like you can afford, right now, you may be able to salvage the few cells you have left floating in that toxic cesspool you call a brain."

Ray squawks like the indignant tropical bird that his spirit animal is.

"Now is no time for flirting, Brad! There are fucking _aliens_ -"

"Stop calling me when you're high," says Brad. And then he hangs up, because Brad is a total asshole sometimes.

Still, Ray gets the last laugh when Brad calls him back four hours later and simply says;

"All right, what the _fuck_?"

"I told you!" crows Ray, and the taste of victory is sweet on his tongue whilst Brad cusses out the government for keeping this from the public.

-

Ray laughs himself sick when it turns out that Captain Steve Rogers is not, in fact, an ultra-conservative Army lapdog just salivating at the chance to return America back into the land of traditional Christian values. He's actually an angry hippy liberal, not afraid to call reporters, or supposed 'experts', military or otherwise, out on their bullshit. Ray watches his interviews, post-New York, avidly so that he can relay his findings to a severely unimpressed Brad.

"I feel bad for using his name for that fuckwit McGraw's nickname, now," Ray is not ashamed to confess. "The real Cap is _way_ less of an asshole than we were all led to believe. World War Two propaganda sucks seriously hairy, sweaty balls."

"I always knew it wasn't right to use his stage name that way. Captain America was always a hero to me." Comes a familiar drawl from his left, and Ray almost falls off his breakfast bar stool in surprise.

"Sunshine!" Ray shrieks, unashamedly launching himself at Walt, "Moon of my life, Khaleesi of my heart, what are you doing here?"

Walt deftly evades Ray's grabby hands with the supreme ease that comes with long-suffering experience. 

"I knew I was going to regret buying you that Game of Thrones boxset. I don't know how I let you talk me into these things." Walt laments, ducking down to stow his holdall underneath Brad's dining table.

"Waaaaalt," Ray pouts, "Let me love you!"

"Jesus Christ, Walt, would you hug him already before he starts bawling like the over-grown, under-nourished child he is." Brad yells, from somewhere in the kitchen on the other side of the breakfast bar.

Walt sighs, looking extremely put upon, but he stops weaving around trying to avoid Ray's spaghetti arms. 

Ray sniffs, folding his arms across his (perfectly manly and not at all too skinny) chest. "It's fine, I won't force my loving arms on you. I know when I am not wanted."

It's not even ten seconds before Walt is wrapping himself around Ray like a warm southern blanket of puppy love and rainbows. Ray practically melts into his sun-bronzed arms, nuzzling into his sun-bleached corn-fed hick hair.

Ray is 100% sure that, since aliens are a real thing now, so are parallel universes. He's pretty sure Walt is the love of his life in roughly half of them. Unfortunately, this is not one of those universes (but that doesn't stop Ray from licking affectionately along Walt's neck and all up the side of his face).

"Jesus _Christ_ ," Brad repeats, coming into the dining room to put beer on the table, but Ray pays him no mind.

"Ignore him, my sun and stars," Ray tells Walt, who is squirming with helpless laughter, "His shrivelled heart cannot comprehend our love. And he's still all butt-hurt that Captain America came out as a Democrat."

-

"How does it feel to know your childhood hero is a dick-smoking homo, James?" Ray sing-songs, from where he is face-planted on the bar.

Trombley eyes him warily from where he is busy cleaning glasses.

The bar doesn't open for another hour, but Ray is already far from sober. He gets this way whenever Brad is deployed, and all of the guys know not to say jack about it, even psycho baby-killers like Trombley. Its not that Ray regrets leaving the Marines, but so many of them are out now... and it gives him shivers down his spine, not personally knowing the guys who are now trusted to be at Brad's six.

"Gotta be a kick in the teeth, huh?" Ray continues blithley, "Knowing Captain America is ashamed of you, personally, for all the shit you spew."

Trombley sighs heavily, sliding him another whiskey, which Ray has already been assured is on the house. Even though it's usually only beer that is free for servicemen and women in Trombley's bar. Who would have thought that dead-eyed killer would grow up to be a responsible small-business owner? It boggles the mind.

"I'm not 19 anymore, Person." Trombley reminds him and Ray closes his eyes, trying not to picture Brad's freshly shorn hair and bright blue eyes that glinted in the light when he said goodbye.

"Ain't that the truth," Ray replies, and drinks his whiskey.

-

Skype is a shitty piece of technology and Ray doesn't know why he has to put up with it when there are men literally flying on wings in para-rescue these days. Fucking communists, this is probably all their fault.

Or maybe it's the fault of the Nazis in their homeland security services, which were apparently trying to take over the world in a domination/annihilation plot straight out of a James Bond movie. Ray is not on enough uppers to deal with this level of FUBAR without Brad here to complain to, so he has to deal with frozen screens and comms that make Ray's techie heart bleed with the need to fix it. But laptops are not his speciality; that's what he keeps Brad around for.

When the video and sound eventually synch up, Ray finally gets to tell Brad all about the epic clusterfuck taking place on the home land. 

Brad makes all the appropriate noises while Ray runs his mouth, not really invested in the various acts of domestic terrorism since there weren't all that many casualties. And he's already gotten the sanitised version courtesy of the BBC.

"So, it turns out that psycho motherfucker with the 'bionic woman' arm is actually Sgt. Bucky Barnes, y'know, war hero and the love of Captain America's life?" Ray reveals, "Apparently the Russians got their commie hands into his brain, using some freaking mind-wipe shit straight out of Stephen King's wet dreams and then HYDRA made him into the perfect assassin. He's been a POW for like 70 fucking years, dude. And when they weren't torturing the poor guy, they _froze_ him. Futurama cryo-style. That's why he still looks young."

Brad stares at him in silence so long that Ray thinks the screen has frozen again, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when the other man whispers;

"Fuck."

-

"I love a good Disney movie but I never liked fairy tales," Ray begins, "Bunch a frat boys killing skeevy old hags and marrying uptight goody-girls instead of shacking up with Xena- or Buffy-like badass ladies, like a _real_ warrior would. But damn it all, LT. This is some real fairy godmother bullshit, Captain America's one true love coming back from the dead."

He fingers the fancy blown-glass paperweight he is sitting beside, pushing it out of alignment with all the other classy shit on Nate's mahogany desk. The LT always did have impeccable taste. Not that Ray is at all jealous or bitter about the looks that passed, in theatre, between the LT and Brad. He doesn't remember any form of favouritism ever taking place, either. Nope, not even a little bit. 

"It's gotta be a magical dream for Rogers," Ray carries on, "'Sept with more cold war commie assassin fuckery and war crimes. You gotta make sure they don't string Barnes up for it. You know how to talk all eloquent and shit, LT. Cap deserves to marry his boo like any other honourable US military hero returned from war."

"How did you get into my office?" says Nate.

Ray waves away this unimportant detail and steamrolls on. "This is some serious bullshit, LT. They're gonna crucify him, and you gotta rally the troops, light the bastion of freedom, call to arms all true believers in love and liberty-"

"If I promise to get my department involved, and personally offer Barnes assistance in the form of my brilliant legal team, will you stop talking?" Nate pleads, because he always knew how to get shit done efficiently.

"Sure thing, LT!" Ray chimes, hopping off Nate's expensive desk in order to give the man a very quick, very respectful hug. "You're an officer and a gentleman."

"I'm not actually either of those things, Ray. Especially not anyone's Lieutenant any more." Nate reminds him gently, obviously clamping down on the megawatt smile that has half-formed on his ridiculously cute baby-face, due to Ray's antics.

"Oh, shit! Sorry, LT. I keep forgetting about your promotion." Ray says, completely missing the point, but not out of ignorance. "Thanks so much for doing this, Captain. America's greatest love story is counting on you!"

Before he bounds away, Nate manages to ask after Brad, as though Ray hasn't noticed the world map above his desk littered with coloured pins, laying out the strategic advance of Brad's battalion versus suspected enemy movements. They have a very civilised conversation, wherein neither of them acknowledge the crushing fear they share for the safety of the man they both love, and then Ray continues on his way, safe in the knowledge that Nathaniel Fick is going to slay some fools.

-

"So, Captain America married his childhood sweetheart today." Says Ray smoothly, seated at the breakfast bar in his usual spot, while Brad slices tomatoes in front of him.

Ray is not trusted in the Colbert kitchen, and he's only marginally pissed about it. Mostly, he enjoys the view when Brad's Viking muscles shift as his arms work.

"That right?" Brad mutters, pretending to be engrossed in his vegetable dissection, but Ray knows better. Knows Brad.

So he stays silent enough that Brad gets concerned, and then those beautiful blue eyes are focused on him, trying to read his mind. Ray grins, lopsided and cocksure, trying to ignore the way his knees feel like jell-o.

"He's a national treasure, Brad. It's only right that we engage in the time-honoured tradition of following in the footsteps of our role models."

Brad blinks at him, with his 'what is happening here' face on. Ray wriggles nervously and absolutely does not begin mentally packing his suitcases and wondering how much of his stuff will fit in his piece of shit truck.

"That so?"

Brad's voice is a murmur, and it makes Ray want to crawl into his arms or else under a blanket to hide.

"Uh-huh." Ray says, his traitor tongue deserting him in his hour of need.

"Well," Brad decides to put him out of his misery slowly, the sick fuck, "I suppose if it's good enough for Captain America..."

"Really?" Ray squeaks in disbelief, then turns as red as the sauce Brad is preparing.

Brad somehow squeezes his gigantic body across the breakfast bar without breaking anything, and steals a kiss that would make Walt Disney artists proud of its true love worthiness.

When he pulls back his smile is dazzling, stupid with love, and Ray is pretty sure his own is the same, if slightly more goofy. Damn Brad even makes love-drunk look good. Naturally, he has to break the moment by saying;

"You can't propose for shit, Ray."

Ray shoves him in his ripped chest. "Fuck off, you said yes. Ergo I am fucking boss at proposals."

"I can't believe you just used 'ergo' in a sentence." Brad sighs, like he's already regretting his life choices.

"You love me and my speech habits," Ray grins.

"Yeah," says Brad, that dozy look on his face again, and nothing more needs to be said. Kissing is more fun, anyway; even if the sauce does get burnt.


End file.
